ALP 21.5%
Incumbent MP
Divina D’Anna, since 2021.
- Geography
- Redistribution
- History
- Candidate summary
- Assessment
- 2021 results
- Booth breakdown
- Results maps
Geography
Far north Western Australia. Kimberley covers the Broome, Derby-West Kimberley, Halls Creek and Wyndham-East Kimberley council areas, along with sparsely-populated parts of the East Pilbara, Wiluna and Ngaanyatjarraku council areas. The seat includes the northern centres of Broome and Derby.
Redistribution
Kimberley expanded to take in sparsely-populated parts of Pilbara and North West Central to the south of the seat’s existing territory. These areas cover just over 100 voters.
History
Kimberley has existed as a seat since 1904. The seat has been dominated by the ALP for most of the twentieth century, but Kimberley has never been a very safe seat.
The ALP won the seat off the Country Party in 1924. Two successive Labor MPs held the seat for the next 44 years. In 1968, the Liberal Party’s Alan Ridge won the seat.
In 1980, the Labor Party’s Ernie Bridge was elected. Bridge became the first Aboriginal cabinet minister in Australia in 1986, and served in the ministry until Labor lost power in 1993.
In 1996, Bridge resigned from the ALP, and ran for re-election as an independent. The ALP chose to not run a candidate against him and he won one more term before retiring in 2001.
The ALP’s Carol Martin won the seat back for Labor in 2001. She was re-elected in 2005 and 2008.
Martin retired in 2013 and she was succeeded by Labor candidate Josie Farrer. Farrer won a second term in 2017.
Farrer retired in 2021, and Labor’s Divina D’Anna won the seat.
Assessment
Kimberley would be a key seat in a close election. Kimberley is Labor’s 33rd-best seat.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Divina D’Anna | Labor | 5,747 | 53.9 | +9.0 | 53.9 |
| Geoff Haerewa | Liberal | 2,187 | 20.5 | +3.2 | 20.5 |
| Naomi Pigram | Greens | 1,601 | 15.0 | +5.8 | 15.0 |
| Millie Hills | Nationals | 658 | 6.2 | -10.1 | 6.2 |
| Roger Modolo | One Nation | 221 | 2.1 | -6.0 | 2.1 |
| Kai Jones | Independent | 98 | 0.9 | -1.0 | 0.9 |
| A Herman | No Mandatory Vaccination | 85 | 0.8 | +0.8 | 0.8 |
| Karl Neil Fehlauer | Western Australia Party | 68 | 0.6 | +0.6 | 0.6 |
| Informal | 410 | 3.7 |
2021 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Divina D’Anna | Labor | 7,618 | 71.5 | +8.3 | 71.5 |
| Geoff Haerewa | Liberal | 3,044 | 28.5 | -8.3 | 28.5 |
Polling places have been split into three parts. Polling places in the Broome area have been grouped together, and the remainder of the seat has been split into north and south.
Labor’s two-party-preferred vote ranged from 64.9% in the south to 76.8% in Broome.
The Greens came third, with a primary vote of just under 10% in the rural parts and 21.4% in Broome.
| Voter group | GRN prim % | ALP 2PP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| Broome | 21.4 | 76.8 | 1,740 | 16.3 |
| North | 9.3 | 69.1 | 852 | 8.0 |
| South | 9.9 | 64.9 | 716 | 6.7 |
| Pre-poll | 16.7 | 68.3 | 5,124 | 48.0 |
| Other votes | 10.0 | 77.6 | 2,233 | 20.9 |
Election results in Kimberley at the 2021 WA state election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for Labor, the Liberal Party, the Greens and the Nationals.
Labor should retain but the primary should be fascinating – a high Green vote on environmental issues, very much the Fremantle of North with being Broome being the main town in the seat. A Nationals candidate or Independent would also do well.
@CG Broome has always had a three-way contest which results in Labor winning on Greens preferencing despite the Liberals or Nationals finishing first. No idea why because I didn’t notice it being really hippie when I went there.
Tourism operators in the Kimberley & some indigenous groups source of the Green vote in Broome
@np its more of a 4 way contest traditionally. and labor have finished first for the nearly 50 years since about 1977. i think the vote can vary when you have a lot of FIFO and farm workers moving in and out of the district.
@John yeah four-way is probably better terminology. I forgot about the fact that the Liberals and Nationals field candidates in the same seats in WA.
It’s four-way with Labor benefiting from Greens preferences and the Liberals benefiting from Nationals preferences.
kimberley is just gonna keep getting bigger and bigger due to LDA and the fact perth is growing very soon so i imagine pilbara will shrink to just port hedland
Lib candidate has now resigned https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-20/wa-liberal-candidate-darren-spackman-withdraws-from-election/104963082
They weren’t winning this anyway
Alp seat most times most boundaries. Cannot see any blue
My prediction: Labor hold, especially with the Liberal candidate dropping out. We could see another interesting 4-way race next time the Liberals win big, as in 2013.
Halls Creek, a town that’s 70.9% Aboriginal, has voted Nationals.
Halls Creek results (primaries, with the swing from 2021):
* Nationals: 39.2% (+16.4%)
* Labor: 38.6% (–8.9%)
* Liberal: 9.6% (–8.9%)
* Greens: 6.8% (–2.5%)
* Christians: 5.7% (+5.7%)
The Liberal candidate being disendorsed and the overall swing against Labor have really benefitted the Nationals in Halls Creek. 190 votes were cast there, which is 18 more than the 172 cast in 2021.
np i think this could be at risk in 2029. i think the only real boundary adjustment will be taking the remainder of east pilbara from pilbara.
NP: The Nat candidate was an Aboriginal from Halls Creek (she also came second in 2021). There’s your explanation.
In this seat more than any other, you have to look at individual towns, and where the candidates come from. Spackman won Kununurra with a big swing (despite being disendorsed) – he’s from there. Meanwhile the biggest swing against the Libs was in Derby – their candidate was from there last time. (The Greens did well there, coming second with 24%.) The Christians candidate got a hefty 12.5% in Kununurra – guess where she’s from?
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John: Newman (which is what you mean by “the remainder of East Pilbara”) will never be in Kimberley. It’s a two-day drive away and you have to go through Port Hedland to get there, so it obviously fails as a community of interest. Newman’s actually closer to Perth than it is to any of the Kimberley towns except Broome.
@Bird of Paradox that would make a lot of sense then. It’s like that in the NT too.
I don’t know why anyone really considers this a possibilty for Labor to lose at any election. It would take a very specific set of circumstances to happen.
@bird unfortunately it can only expand in 2 directions. What about marble bar can that be added.
No. It’s already too big and too reliant on the LDA as it is. The immense size of seats like Kimberley and Kalgoorlie is an argument to expand parliament more than anything.
@Bird, how many seats do you reckon should be added? I think they’ve got a lot of catching up to do to get it in line with where it should be at.
I’ve already got an idea what I want to do when the redistribution comes around.
North by West: I like the idea of 71 seats, roughly a 20% increase in the size of parliament. Sounds big, but it would only actually create two new seats in the country (returning the map to something similar to 2008, after the one-vote-one-value reforms).
With that increase, the 46 seats currently in Perth (including Mandurah and Dawesville) becomes 55.4, and the 13 in the rest of the state becomes 15.6. That’s 9 new Perth seats, 2 new country seats, and a hybrid seat (I’m thinking northern Murray-Wellington and southern Darling Range, running down the SW Hwy from Mundijong to Harvey – let’s call it Murray). In the rest of WA, you’d end up with something similar to the 2008 seats of NW Coastal, Moore, Wagin and Eyre being recreated (maybe with different names, especially Wagin).
And most importantly, 71 is the largest prime that divides the order of the Monster group, 59 being the second largest (hey, I don’t just geek out over electoral boundaries). C’mon WAEC, make it happen.
I like the idea of the number of seats increasing in lieu of a large electorate allowance – the arguments about the difficulties representing a large electorate are valid, just not more valid than one vote one value. I think this should also be considered for the size of federal parliament (as well as ensuring that Tasmania’s constitutional minimum is also a fair apportionment)